It is no secret that I have been very supportive of President Obama for his use of drones to 'take out' Al Queda members in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and other places. The problem with terrorist activities is that there are no "lines" and therefore to fight them, you have to use unconventional means. The US Navy SEALS, US Air Force Special Ops Wing, US Army Green Berets and Delta have all been very instrumental in taking the fight to this enemy. I applaud President Obama and support this endeavor.

I have wondered about the Iranian attempts to build a nuclear weapon. Specifically, as they continue their attempts to build their bomb, why is Israel allowing their unfettered experimentation? Given past actions with the Syrians and their nuclear reactor, I would have assumed that by now, the Israelis would have acted.

Apparently, the US and the Israelis have acted... jointly. I have just read the New York Times article about the actions of President Obama, President GW Bush, and the attack on the computer network in Iran. Olympic Games, as the operation was called, initiated by President Bush and continued by President Obama, has been successful in throwing a wrench into the Iranian machinery. Once again I applaud President Obama for his actions in this area.

Iran retaliatin' for sanctions...US banks under cyberattack say Iran is a suspectFri, Jan 11, 2013 - US financial institutions are being pounded with high-powered cyberattacks that some suspect are being orchestrated by Iran as payback for political sanctions.

There is no doubt within the US government that Iran is behind these attacks, James Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce departments and now a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times. While the identities of those behind the online onslaught officially remain a mystery, it was clear they were using a new weapon for slamming bank Web sites with overwhelming numbers or requests for information. The attackers infected datacenters used to host services in the Internet cloud and commandeered massive computing power to back distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, according to security experts.

DDoS attacks have been a basic hacker weapon for quite some time, but they have typically involved armies of personal computers tainted with viruses and coordinated to make simultaneous requests at Web sites. They are essentially going from a pistol to a cannon, Carl Herberger, Radware vice president of security solutions, said of cyberattackers using datacenters. The top 20 US banks on Wednesday were being hit with a third wave of attacks, each of which has been preceded by a claim of responsibility by a group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters.

The attacks began in September last year, according to Radware, which specializes in commercial computer security and has been investigating the cyberassaults. The landscape we are seeing is essentially a persistent industry sector attack that is unprecedented, Herberger said. Attackers have shrewdly tailored requests to target encrypted pages or data, which are more complicated to process and therefore tax Web sites more, according to Radware. Such requests are particularly nefarious because encrypted exchanges are often shielded from security software intended to guard against attacks.

Herberger described how hackers sometimes use DDoS attacks to trigger fail systems that can sometimes allow invaders to get to data. I call it the battering ram effect, Herberger said. They literally batter in the front door; that is a really dark side of this world. Attacks on banks could also be test runs for assaults on other business sectors or even smart systems controlling vital infrastructure. Lets suppose this is state sponsored, Herberger said. Could these not be dry runs? If the banks are permeable what is the likelihood that other systems are? John Bumgarner of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit group that studies the impact of cyberthreats, cautioned against rushing to assign blame for the attacks. There is no irrefutable evidence that the Iranian government was responsible, Bumgarner said.

An explosion deep within Irans Fordow nuclear facility has destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime. The previously secret nuclear site has become a center for Irans nuclear activity because of the 2,700 centrifuges enriching uranium to the 20-percent level. A further enrichment to weapons grade would take only weeks, experts say. The level of enrichment has been a major concern to Israeli officials, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has warned about the 20-percent enriched stockpile. The explosion occurred Monday, the day before Israeli elections weakened Netanyahus political control.

Iran, to avoid alarm, had converted part of the stockpile to fuel plates for use in the Tehran Research Reactor. However, days after the recent failed talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian officials announced the enrichment process will not stop even for a moment. The regimes uranium enrichment process takes place at two known sites: the Natanz facility with more than 10,000 centrifuges and Fordow with more than 2,700. The regime currently has enough low-grade (3.5 percent) uranium stockpiled for six nuclear bombs if further enriched. However, more time is needed for conversion of the low-grade uranium than what would be needed for a stockpile at 20 percent. It takes 225 kilograms of enriched uranium at the 20-percent level to further enrich to the 90-percent level for one nuclear bomb.

According to a source in the security forces protecting Fordow, an explosion on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Tehran time rocked the site, which is buried deep under a mountain and immune not only to airstrikes but to most bunker-buster bombs. The report of the blast came via Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic regimes Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles, and the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast, the source said. As of Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers had failed to reach the trapped personnel.

The site, about 300 feet under a mountain, had two elevators which now are out of commission. One elevator descended about 240 feet and was used to reach centrifuge chambers. The other went to the bottom to carry heavy equipment and transfer uranium hexafluoride. One emergency staircase reaches the bottom of the site and another one was not complete. The source said the emergency exit southwest of the site is unreachable. The regime believes the blast was sabotage and the explosives could have reached the area disguised as equipment or in the uranium hexafluoride stock transferred to the site, the source said. The explosion occurred at the third centrifuge chambers, with the high-grade enriched uranium reserves below them. The information was passed on to U.S. officials but has not been verified or denied by the regime or other sources within the regime.

It is no secret that I have been very supportive of President Obama for his use of drones to 'take out' Al Queda members in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and other places. The problem with terrorist activities is that there are no "lines" and therefore to fight them, you have to use unconventional means. The US Navy SEALS, US Air Force Special Ops Wing, US Army Green Berets and Delta have all been very instrumental in taking the fight to this enemy. I applaud President Obama and support this endeavor.

I have wondered about the Iranian attempts to build a nuclear weapon. Specifically, as they continue their attempts to build their bomb, why is Israel allowing their unfettered experimentation? Given past actions with the Syrians and their nuclear reactor, I would have assumed that by now, the Israelis would have acted.

Apparently, the US and the Israelis have acted... jointly. I have just read the New York Times article about the actions of President Obama, President GW Bush, and the attack on the computer network in Iran. Olympic Games, as the operation was called, initiated by President Bush and continued by President Obama, has been successful in throwing a wrench into the Iranian machinery. Once again I applaud President Obama for his actions in this area.

Your thoughts?

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You are consistent, thank you for your service. It's nice to see Airforce Spec Ops get a shout out. The CCT's,Para's,SOWT'S, and AFSOC are elite but often unheard of groups of warriors.

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